The RE Podcast
The RE Podcast
S13 E7: The One About The Institute For The Impact Of Faith In Life
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Faith's transformative power takes center stage as we welcome Dr. Jake Scott, Director of the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life. Join us for an enlightening conversation on how faith is not only surviving but thriving amid growing secularism and religious diversity in the UK. Discover how historical influences and modern movements are shaping a society that values faith as a cornerstone for moral enrichment and societal good, particularly among younger generations who are championing a more active role for faith in public life.
Unravel the complexities of religious plurality and tolerance as we explore the bridges built by education and personal interactions across diverse faith communities. From Christianity's historical impact on British society to the unique challenges and opportunities presented by Islam's growth, we dive into the vital role of faith literacy in reducing prejudice and promoting understanding. Our discussion examines the dynamic interplay between faith and societal acceptance, noting how exposure to different beliefs fosters an inclusive community and how people perceive faith as a force for good.
Explore the multifaceted ways faith influences mental health, work environments, and even environmental stewardship. We spotlight faith's dual role in providing resilience while presenting challenges and how it shapes positive work ethics and community contributions. Our conversation delves into the environmental responsibilities embraced by various religious groups, highlighting the generational divide in climate anxiety and the power of faith as a coping mechanism. Tune in for a thought-provoking analysis of how religious education broadens our understanding of humanity, promising insights that could contribute to a more harmonious and inclusive world.
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Welcome to the RE Podcast, the first dedicated RE Podcast for students and teachers. My name is Louisa-Jane Smith and this is the RE Podcast the podcast for those of you who think RE is boring which it is, and I'll prove it to you. My guest today is from the Institute for the Impact of Faith and we're going to have a conversation about understandably how faith impacts people's lives. This is a really fascinating area of RE and very much relevant to the worldviews approach many of us are now moving towards. We consider our subject through a social sciences lens, but also is a key part of the Key Stage 4 exam specifications, where we consider the impact of belief on believers. I will let my guest introduce himself.
Speaker 2:Hello, my name is Dr Jake Scott. I am the Director of the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life and thank you so much for having me on this podcast.
Speaker 1:No, absolute pleasure. So just remind us of the name again, because I think I got it wrong in the introduction.
Speaker 2:No, it's not a problem, it's a long one. It's the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life.
Speaker 1:Okay, can you just tell us what it is, how it started and why it started?
Speaker 2:Of course. So the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life is a research forum dedicated to exploring and examining and promoting the role that faith plays in the lives of people in the UK, whether that's at home, in the community or at work or anything in between. And part of the reason we call ourselves a research forum is because we're not quite a think tank. We don't just think, we also do, and part of that is that we produce reports and undertake research, but we also host events and roundtables and networking events and try and introduce people and really drive towards the ultimate goal of positively promoting the role that faith plays in the lives of people in the UK. And it's for that reason that we work in an educational manner, work in an educational manner. We undertake research into the attitudes of people in the UK towards faith, but also the attitudes of people of faith towards different aspects of their lives and the reason it started. It got going properly about a year ago, but this is a product of a conversation that I've been having with people for years and years, between myself, who is an Anglican Christian, and friends of mine who are or have been Sunni or Shia Muslims or progressive or Orthodox Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, etc.
Speaker 2:I lived in Birmingham for eight years, which is, of course, one of the most multi-religious cities in the country could well be one of the most multi-religious cities in Europe and, of course, in that time I spoke to a lot of people who said well, faith shapes my life in many different ways and, theological differences aside, we talked and realized there were a lot of similarities between us. As a result, we thought there needs to be something that puts faith on the front foot, because for a long time, faith's been on the back foot. In many different ways. Different faiths have been on the back foot. Faith in general has been defensive and sort of making excuses or apologies for itself, Whereas in reality, faith is one of the most constant positive and constructive phenomena in history and that needs to be made more aware of and, in an increasingly diverse society such as Britain, there needs to be a voice that is making that argument unapologetically and, I think, giving a full-throated defence and promotion of the role that faith plays in shaping the lives of people in the UK.
Speaker 1:So I think there's two things kind of running alongside what you're saying, and number one is that the reality is that we are less religious than we've been in the past if we look at sort of the recent census.
Speaker 1:But actually we are much more religiously diverse, which seems like a contradiction, but actually it is not. But also I think that the exposure or the reputation that religion has often is very negative. So I think often we only hear the stories of the mistakes that religions make or the minority that are doing awful things, and actually what isn't front and center is that positive nature of faith, not only the way that it impacts the person with the faith, but also the way that the person of faith impacts society. So I think that for us as RV teachers is the beauty that we try to express and the messiness, you know, it's the diversity of experience of that. But I think it's such a lovely thing to have come out of a serendipitous conversation, so let's focus on that. Why do you think that faith has such a positive role in the 21st century?
Speaker 2:Well, I think we can answer that in terms of the 21st century by looking at history first, and many people, I'm sure, who are interested in faith will have read books such as Tom Holland's Dominion. And if anyone has not read that book, it's a fantastic book Because one of the ways it starts is by pointing out that the way we even think about one another is a product of faith. And he compares modern world and modern Britain to ancient and republican Rome and points out that in those settings life did not have an intrinsic moral worth. It was very much attached to a certain hierarchical view of society. That was what we might call utilitarian. But even that is an anachronistic reading of what they thought. But when you have the Christian revolution, especially St Paul's epistles teaching us that all people hold equal moral worth and that in the body of Christ there is no man or woman, jew or Gentile, etc. There's simply person as a member of the body of Christ, that was a huge revolution. That was a way of thinking that had not really been promulgated in that way before. Different teachings had argued that, but they had remained relatively particular, applying to a certain set of people, relatively particular applying to a certain set of people Now, with, of course, the Christian revolution then taking place over 2,000 years and then, of course, islam coming through after that and the inheritance of Judaism through Christianity and into the modern world and, of course, remaining as a separate faith through the rabbinical revolution and revisions and so on, faith continued to shape the way we thought about not just ourselves in society but us as a person, and one of the fantastic books again that I recommend on this is Larry Sedentop's Inventing the Individual.
Speaker 2:Sedentop points out that in many ways religion inspired us to think of ourselves as individuals, as agents of moral worth and the moral spirit. So, rather than just simply, you know, it's God's plan, we began to see ourselves as an active part of God's plan. So, even though the typical story is that religion and science are opposites, and religion has a deterministic view of the world and science is about empowering and control, and religion has a deterministic view of the world and science is about empowering and control, actually the argument, anthropologically and sociologically speaking, is not quite that simple that actually the way we think about ourselves through a religious lens has become one in which we play an active role in the fate of the world and in the shape of society. So even, for example, climate change and environmentalism, the way we think about the planet is very much religiously inspired. We are inheritors, we are protectors, we are regents, we are guardians, etc. Of a shared world.
Speaker 2:That is a fundamentally religious viewpoint, because that relies on there being some kind of greater obligation than simply that which belongs to our immediate person, our immediate society.
Speaker 2:So that's part of the reason why we've undertaken the reports that we have, looking at things like environmentalism, but also mental health and attitudes to work, and not just how the religious person views themselves, but how the religious person, like you say, thinks about society and their wider obligations, and also why you very often hear people say things like well, I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.
Speaker 2:Now that's perfectly fine, that's perfectly valid, nobody's going to try and invalidate that. But usually, as I think you said, that's usually because of a perception of religions rather than a perception of faith. Hence why we call ourselves the impact of faith in life, because we're not just about religion, we're also about just the role that faith plays, because sometimes and I think probably one of the most important things is, we can have faith in each other and faith in our, in our ability to make an impact. So that's why faith, in my opinion, has such a positive role in the 21st century, because it's a living expression of that inheritance that we are part of something greater than us, but it's also the belief that faith and us have the capacity to shape things.
Speaker 1:It feels like, as you're talking and I'm sorry if I'm simplifying this, but I think this is the it's an occupational hazard it feels like you've got that verse in the Bible faith without works is dead. It feels like what you're doing is looking at what that looks like in the 21st century. What does it look like to be an active person with faith today? What are the things that we need to be concerned with in terms of living it out? It's not enough just to have your own little private faith where you worship God so you can get to heaven. That this is active. This is active faith in the 21st century and applying Quranic or biblical or rabbinical teachings very specifically to today. Because of that history of the relationship between society and religion. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2:Definitely and, if I may, I'd like to pick up this point of these are living faiths. Yes, we held an event in September on living as a Jew in modern Britain and we had Rabbi Jonathan Romaine speak and he said the most common myth around Judaism is that it's a dead faith, not just in the sense that there's nobody that practices it, because there obviously are, but in the sense that it's stopped at some point. And he said that's just not true. We are rabbinical Jews. As he said. There were the rabbis, there's the Talmud, there's the Torah, there's living texts, there's constant thought processes that go into these different ways of thinking, and that's also equally true of Christianity in all its different forms around the world.
Speaker 2:There's a reason why the Pope as an institution exists, because the inheritance of Jesus is there has to be a living representative of Christ on earth, why the Church of England continually holds synods, why there are all the time things like GAFCON going on around the world, and it's equally true in Islam.
Speaker 2:That's part of the reason why states like Saudi Arabia and the UAE take such active roles in the determination of the faith, because to them, this isn't a faith that they've inherited and that's it. It's a faith they've inherited and have to continually shape, continually practice. So faith isn't just as is commonly commonly thought of is like the tyranny of a dead text. Now we are alive in a living tradition and again, we have a role in shaping that, just as it has a role in shaping us. We play a role in thinking about why certain teachings may no longer be applicable, but why some of them are equally as applicable, if not more applicable, than when they were first introduced. So it's not as simple. As you know, we just received the word and then that was it, and of course, I'm speaking just as a Christian here, but this is true of basically every faith and every religious person I've spoken to.
Speaker 1:Is there a tension, though, between what is allowed to be adapted and changed? Because you know, certainly my experience is there seems to be certain things that you know. Not all Christians, but maybe the established church, are really reluctant to let go of thinking, particularly sort of attitudes towards something like sex before marriage or homosexuality or abortion. It feels as though sometimes they're kind of being pulled kicking and screaming, not even to make a decision but to have conversations and be open to change. Have you found that at all, that there's any kind of reluctance to change? Or maybe not conflict that's maybe the wrong word but just sort of debates about certain topics? And how do you decide what is something you can adapt to the modern time and what's sacred of?
Speaker 2:course. So one of the things that we do our best to do is avoid theological discussions, largely because they lend themselves to particular problems. Again, you know what you mentioned there tends to be a very Christian problem in this country, but that's largely because of the attitudes of the society in which the church acts, whereas other societies have similar religious teachings but don't have, in contrast, social attitudes that chafe with those religious teachings. So what I would prefer to say is that, from speaking to people of faith, they find conversations around change in terms of doctrine and teaching to be more complex and probably more compelling when they're made from within the faith rather than from without faith. So what I mean by that is, again, speaking as a Christian.
Speaker 2:We were taught to create a church that moved the world rather than move with the world, and in that regard, what we try to do is look at the teachings and the gospels and the epistles and the word and think what does that imply, rather than what do the pressures of the outside world compel us to do? And for that reason, like I say, I prefer to stay away from theological disagreements and arguments. I'm not a theological scholar I genuinely wish I was but you find that the similarities between faiths, and this is perhaps where our work is perhaps more important. The similarities between faiths and between people is perhaps where our work is perhaps more important. The similarities between faiths and between people of faith is that they would rather be appealed to on the basis of the faith they believe in rather than something external to that faith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I think the difficulty is, if you're not part of that faith, representing the faith and the opinions of that faith in a way that makes sense to the people within that faith and often that doesn't happen that you have your own kind of positionality and that maybe antagonizes people. Within that they feel misrepresented or misunderstood. Coming then, from a different angle, what have you noticed about, maybe, the changing religious context in Britain today, particularly, as I mentioned earlier, what we're sort of seeing in the recent census.
Speaker 2:So there's two strands which I think we should probably talk about. I'm glad you brought up the census. So Britain is in a very, very unusual and almost unique scenario in that it's becoming both more secular and more religiously diverse. Yes, now, there's all sorts of consequences and factors that go into this. So, as we've talked about, part of it is due to historical disillusionment with established religion and with the established faith. Many people on the corollary might call themselves Christian but not attend church every week. But also many people might call themselves agnostic or atheist, but they still believe in something.
Speaker 2:So the idea that there is a disappearance of faith in the UK is almost certainly a myth. And at the same time we're becoming more religiously diverse. There's roughly 4 million Muslims in this country. That's grown massively since the 2000. And likewise, for the first time ever, there are now over a million Hindus in the country.
Speaker 2:And these are faiths that have got long, long traditions of being present in Britain, but for the first time they're becoming significant presences to contend with and challenging, not necessarily in the sense of what those religions are, but challenging in the sense that the way society has been structured, is going to chafe against the presences of things that don't necessarily see things in the same way, and that's been as true for as long as there's been society. So it's not attributing any normative judgment to any particular faith. That's just a simple historical observation. But equally and this is perhaps where that becomes more complex again younger people have seen a greater role for faith in life and that's a really interesting statistic that we found in our research. Younger people are more open to faith, have a more diverse friendship group, have seen a greater role for faith in politics asking that British politicians listen to faith leaders more, talk more openly about their faith and this is true whether they're Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Jew or any of these different faiths that are present in the UK.
Speaker 2:So insofar as we're becoming more secular and more religiously diverse, younger generations are seeing a greater role and a more positive role for faith in life and there is definitely amongst younger people a greater appreciation for knowing and understanding different faiths around the world. So not merely these younger people saying it's my faith that matters. They're saying it's faith in general that matters and we should be more aware of that and it's important to know that. So there's definitely ongoing religious changes in the UK and will be for probably the next 20, 30, 40 years. If there is a potential, as we would argue for faith to encourage a more active participation in society and a more positive way of thinking about contributing to society and shaping our moral lives, then there's an opportunity to harness that power and use it for good.
Speaker 1:So there's a couple of things I want to pick up on just to kind of try and understand that point. Yeah, in terms of becoming more religiously diverse and that causing challenges for the way that society is structured, is that because we are historically a Christian country and so actually a lot of our structures, things like the king being the head of the Church of England, our holidays being very much linked to Christianity Is that the kind of thing that you're talking about, or is there other things I'm not thinking about?
Speaker 2:No, that's exactly right. So our social life in the UK is not exclusively but heavily structured by our Christian inheritance which, it has to be said, the vast majority of people in the UK appreciate. We typically see 69 to 73% of people in the UK say that Christianity plays an important role in Britain's heritage. But when it comes to the way it's shaped, our lives, our working days, our weekends, our holidays, our political systems, they are structured by that Christian inheritance. Now that doesn't mean that they're not welcoming, and I think one of the virtues of Britain's history is that it is a very welcoming society on the whole and has become more so in recent years. It hasn't always been the most tolerant, but it's generally moved in the direction of being more tolerant and being more welcoming. And what I think is the virtue of that is that, for example, the weekend sure is when most of us take a rest, but at the same time many Jews celebrate Shabbat after, especially as the sun goes down earlier and earlier, they celebrate it mid-afternoon from Friday onwards. Many Jews have had that conversation with their employer and their employer has said that's fine.
Speaker 2:Many Muslims say to their employer look, I just need somewhere to pray for three to four minutes three times a day, given that they're not at work for the whole 24 hours, and their employer says that's fine. I know so many Muslims who, during Ramadan, they say to their employer look, I will just be a little bit low on energy and I'll be at work, but it will be harder, and they say that's fine. What can I do to support you? Even our working society, our culture, has shifted from expecting certain things and expecting a certain person at work to being more welcoming and more tolerant in general, and religion has played a big part in that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, when I say there's the challenges, what's interesting is that that's not necessarily a challenge to the system. Rather, it's challenging in terms of how we negotiate these things. But broadly speaking, people are empathetic and I think what's really important as well is if you are religious, you're more likely to be accommodating for different faiths. So even if you are Christian and you are an an employer and your Muslim employee says to you you know, I need to take 10 minutes to pray or I need to leave a bit earlier because I'm fasting for Ramadan, you are more likely to say that's okay and that tends to be proven by the research. So that's broadly what I mean in that regard.
Speaker 1:And can I ask how you would respond to maybe a traditional Christian who feels threatened by the decline in Christianity and the increase in other religions? How would you kind of maybe reframe that for them? I think?
Speaker 2:anyone who is of any faith going to see the decline in their faith as something to lament. So it's not about trying to ameliorate that and say, well, you don't have anything to be upset about, because of course they do. But what I would say is that we found and this isn't just in our research as well actually, this was also research conducted by I can't remember the name of the body, but it was on behalf of the UK government back in 2019. It was commissioned as part of the religious freedom David Burroughs, the Envoy for Religious Freedom.
Speaker 2:Many minority faiths feel as though they can be religious in this country by virtue of its religious inheritance. So, almost to a Christian, I would say well, actually it's the inheritance of your faith that means that other faiths feel at home here or feel welcome here, and so it's obviously. I'm a Christian. I would love more people to go to church I really, really would but it's my job to go and encourage them. By no means am I going to force them. I'm not going to drag them along with me, but there have been times where I've said to someone why don't you just come to my church and see what it's like and experience it?
Speaker 2:And either they've joined the Church of England after, or they've become Catholic, or they've said well, actually I'm going to explore this a bit more and then moved into a different area of faith. Or they've looked at a different faith entirely and found that that's appropriate for them, or they've rejected faith altogether. It's their choice. But to say to someone who is Christian, regarding the decline of Christianity in this country and the rise of other faiths, say like decline in Christianity, of course it's something to be mourned, but the rise of other faiths is not a challenge. It's a product of our Christian inheritance and insofar as and this is my personal perspective insofar as that heritage is respected and maintained because it facilitates plurality, that's fine. Where anything that facilitates plurality is challenged, that becomes a problem.
Speaker 1:So actually it almost feels as though Christianity benefits from plurality, because as a society we are learning to respect people that think something different to ourselves and actually the more pluralistic we become, the more tolerant we become of differences, and actually that's going to benefit the Christian in your research are much more open to religion. Have you got any thoughts about what is causing that? Because I know I want to think that it's because of our teachers, but it may not be.
Speaker 2:Well, no, I think it is. Because, again, one of the facts that we found consistently is that younger people say that it's important to know what other faiths think. Or the phrasing we use in our survey is it's important to understand what the major world faiths believe. Now you are only going to think that if you're exposed to them. You don't have that kind of thought in a vacuum, and usually it's because faith literacy is rising as a result of education. It's also because of faith literacy rising by virtue of having friends of other faiths. So actually being exposed to these things plays a role in it.
Speaker 2:And as british society becomes more religiously diverse, younger people certainly seem to feel that there is a value placed on knowing what these different faiths around the world think, but also there is a value on tolerance, you know, not just knowing but also accepting what other faiths think. So in terms of the reason why that's there, definitely I think religious education plays a role and faith literacy in general. But also I think actually experiencing that a religiously diverse society is not a threat has encouraged greater acceptance and tolerance. Because I'm not saying that, you know, Britain hasn't had religious diversity ever, but typically that diversity has been Christian diversity, Whereas now there's faith diversity. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So actually I'm thinking from the social sciences if I look at someone like Gordon Allport who in the 1950s came up with the contact theory that the more contact you have, the less prejudice you have and the more tolerance. And so by having good RE, by living in a multicultural society, by having contact with people of other faiths, actually that's really benefiting people and making them curious and interested and respectful, even if they don't necessarily agree. So that's really positive. Now, a lot of the conversation we've had at the moment is related to people with a religious faith. Have you sort of done any work in terms of the similarities and differences between faith and non-faith groups?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when we put out our surveys on a monthly basis, we ask both whole population samples and we also ask faith population samples. So there are some statistics that are just very illuminating, both in terms of the differences between faith groups and the similarities between faith groups, and two questions I think are really illustrative of this. So we ask people to what extent they agree or disagree with statements, and one of those is faith and religion are generally a force for good in society. Now, in our most recent statistics, 38% was the national average in terms of agreement. So 38% of the British public agrees that faith and religion are generally a force for good in society. This rises to 54% for Christians, 65% for Muslims and 84% for Hindus. On the corollary, 42% of the British public disagreed. Now that should be concerning because, as it stands, more people believe that faith plays a negative role and a positive role in society. But that's incumbent on us and our research to prove that actually faith does play a positive role and of course, as we've said already in this, that could be coloured by experiences of established faith organisations. So it's important to go into the research as to actually why people have that scepticism. But nonetheless, I think the statistics are alarming.
Speaker 2:However, in terms of similarities between faith and non-faith groups, we ask the question whether they agree with the statement someone of any faith should be able to be prime minister.
Speaker 2:68% of the British public agrees, and that's the same figure for Christians, it rises to 75% for Muslims and it rises again to 81% for Hindus. So, insofar as there is broad agreement and clearly a broad acceptance of plurality of faiths, there is marginally higher agreement with that statement amongst people of faith, and this is typically the trend. I'm pretty sure we can reasonably expect that when questions around the plurality of faith in society are asked, people of faith are more likely to agree. But at the same time, when it comes to the role that faith plays in life, we are expecting people of faith to be more appreciative or agree that it is going to have a greater impact than the wider population. So that, to me, I think, is where we can probably draw the lines of pattern between the two that people of faith are more appreciative than people not of faith of the role that faith plays, but that, broadly speaking, there's agreement between people of faith and not people of faith in terms of religious and social plurality and acceptance.
Speaker 1:And I think it's interesting. You know you've always got to kind of question and you're right to say that the data tells us one thing, but looking into the reasons for that data is interesting in that if the question is, do you think it has a positive or a negative effect? If people have had no personal experience of religion, then actually they get their knowledge from the media and the media generally focuses on the negative and so excuse people's perception. Or it could be that they have had a negative experience within a faith group and that's going to affect that and you don't know. Negative experience within a faith group and that's going to affect that and you don't know. But actually, if you ask them, can you tell me one positive impact that religion has on society?
Speaker 2:they could probably all think of something yeah, and I think that's definitely the case. When it comes to the media, we poll on this consistently. So when we ask the question do you agree that the media has portrayed different religious groups in a balanced way? 23 of the british public says yes, yes, 33 says no. So, um, you know there's clearly a recognition that there is not a balanced representation of faith.
Speaker 2:Um, but again, like and this is this is something that I personally want to do a really deep research into is why might people think that there is an accurate representation of faith in the British media? So, for example, you might ask two separate questions to someone, which is A do you think your religion is well represented in the media? And B do you think your religion is accurately represented in the media? Because those two things are different. Someone might say well, no, my faith is not accurately represented in the media, but it's everywhere, and an example of this typically is amongst Muslims. So Islam is in the headlines frequently in the British press, but it's 75% negative, like overwhelmingly negative. So the British Muslim might say my faith's represented in the media, but it's 75% negative, like overwhelmingly negative. So the British Muslim might say my faith's represented the media, but not good and that is a really difficult thing to tease out. So I think you're absolutely right that the media representation of faith can be negative and is usually negative, and likewise, on the other end, when you say, like you know, someone might have a good experience of faith, someone might have a good experience of the work that faith groups do, without realizing it so typically.
Speaker 2:I lived in Birmingham. I went to a church and every week we were encouraged to give to the food bank and there was a general collection that was then taken to the food bank. Those people never know that it's a Christian church that's delivering that food and they shouldn't know because it's not a point right, it's doing good work for the sake of good work. But those people benefit from a Christian organization and they might have personally terrible things to say about Christians. That's their choice, that's their prerogative.
Speaker 2:Likewise, I've come across different groups in the north of England, for example, muslim groups that frequently go out and do litter picks, tree planting, river cleaning, all these sorts of things. Again, nobody's ever going to know that unless it's positively promoted in the media. But it's not in the religious person's interest to do that or it's not even in their inclination, because it's not the reason you do the work. So, again, you might have a positive experience without realizing it. And that's the reason why third parties like ours exist to say actually there is a really positive role that faith is playing in life. It's just hidden. So that's something I'd really like people to take away from this a hundred percent.
Speaker 1:And actually my next question, but I think you've kind of answered it is about groups that are misrepresented and how and why they're misrepresented, but I don't know if there's anything more you want to say on that you have just talked very specifically about how they are, why they are and the impact on that, but if there's anything else you want to say, Certainly so.
Speaker 2:As I say, in September we held a panel on living as a Jew in modern Britain. Just this time last week we held a panel on living as a Christian in modern Britain, and in April we held a panel on living as a Christian in modern Britain. And in April we held a panel on living as a Muslim in modern Britain. And every single faith said they are misrepresented.
Speaker 1:Every single faith.
Speaker 2:Now that is a really unfortunate thing to hear, a really upsetting thing to hear because clearly, as I say, there are faiths that are overrepresented in the media, but not necessarily for good reasons, and that's a really unfortunate and difficult thing to challenge because once those perceptions are entrenched, very hard to change them. As I've indicated in the past, we focused for the first year and are still focusing on Islam, especially in the UK, because it's the fastest growing faith in the UK and also the most misunderstood. There was a research report from the University of Birmingham a few years ago now I think it was 2021, about Islamophobia as what they call the middle class bigotry. So the point here was there was a typical trend amongst more educated people to hold incorrect beliefs about Islam and likewise, as a sort of side point, to say this isn't just Islam.
Speaker 2:When we had the panel on living as a Jew, rabbi Jonathan, again, he spoke about how he goes into school and he does something quite clever actually he asks students to draw him before he gets there and usually they draw quite a traditional Orthodox Jew you, you know, with the curls down the side and the large hats, not necessarily with a yarmulke, but like a large hat and then he walks in and he looks nothing like that and of course that's powerful in itself. But another time he said one time he was asked by the teacher where's the goat? And he said what do you mean? And they said, well, where's the goat? Because aren't you going to slaughter a goat for us? And he was like what are you talking about? So you know there are misrepresentations and misunderstandings everywhere, everywhere.
Speaker 2:When we held our panel back in March on the report that we produced about British Islam, we had representation from four different Muslim groups in the UK. We had the Ahmadiyya Muslims from South London, we had the Dawoodi Bora Muslims from North London, we had Salma Khanum, the chair and founder of Aisha Help, and Abdurrahman Syed, the chair of Al-Munar, which is the Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, and all of them said that the point of things like this, panels like this, is to say, first of all, we're not a monolith. There is a huge variety within Islam.
Speaker 2:But also the perceptions of Islam can be countered quite simply through conversation, and it's exactly what you're talking about with contact theory, like if you actually speak to people and understand why they think, what they think and why they practice. What they practice almost always counters prejudice Not always, almost always. Sometimes people come away more convinced of their prejudice. That's an unfortunate reality of life, but for the vast majority of the occasions, contact and exposure helps to counter prejudice.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting and you've mentioned the report there that you did about Islam and the UK. I want to come to that next. But I went to a talk by the Jewish Museum, london and actually you know, as RE teachers, we are so committed to authentically representing diversity, not just within Britain but within the faith groups within Britain, and actually they have some really great resources where they have images that you can use that shows the diversity within Judaism To anyone who's listening that hasn't gone onto that website and seen those there. Because actually you're right that in the past we've simplified religion, we have reinforced misconceptions and prejudices about faith groups, completely unintentionally, but because we use Google to search and you know Google replicates stereotypes and simplifications. So it's so good to go to your authentic community and represent them.
Speaker 1:If you can't get a speaker in, but just getting authentic pictures, let's just talk about these reports. So over the last year you've written four reports the Role of Faith in Mental Health, the Role of Faith in Work, islam in the UK and Faith versus the Environment, and all of those you've kind of made little nods to as you've been speaking, but let's look at each of those and just sort of briefly summarize what you found. So let's look at each of those and just sort of briefly summarize what you found. So let's look at the role of faith in mental health.
Speaker 2:Of course. So this was the first report that we published and it was authored by Dr Rakeba Sun, our senior research associate at the time. What we did was we conducted a nationally representative survey of just over 2,000 people and we asked questions around psychological well-being, happiness, resilience, self-control, optimism and life satisfaction, and the idea here was to try and tease out differences between people of faith and people who are not of faith and the differences between those groups in terms of those six categories. We didn't have the statistical confidence to definitively say between every single faith group, but we were able to draw some comparisons between the major faith groups, which in this report, were Christians, muslims, jews and Hindus, and there's a significant difference between people of faith and people without faith when it comes to these six categories.
Speaker 2:When we asked around resilience which to me is very, very important around facing and dealing with the challenges that life presents, we asked prior to this question whether your faith background was important to your identity. So for those who said that their religious background is important to their personal identity, 76% said they were confident in handling the challenges that come with life, and for those who said their religious background is not important to their identity, 63% said that they were confident. Now, this is important because these are people who say they are religious but for whom their faith is not an important part of their identity. So there's a clear correlation between religious sincerity and the ability to handle the challenges in life. So 69% of those who say that their religious background is important to their identity say they're optimistic about their future, whereas only 48% of those who say their religious background is not important to their personal identity say they're optimistic about their future.
Speaker 2:And the reason we asked differences between these questions is important because, again, someone might have a cultural heritage or a familial heritage to a certain faith, but they might not consider it important to their identity. For example, it's quite easy to be Jewish by heritage but have converted into another faith, and vice versa. Many people who are non-religious when they're born but convert into a faith, those are people for whom their religious identity tends to be more important. You know, converts and reverts tend to have a greater conviction that it's got a greater impact on their life. I say that for me, those were two of the real headline facts when it came to the mental health report.
Speaker 1:And we've got to be. You know there's going to be people listening who are of faith and think well. Therefore, that proves that there is a God, or it proves that religion is real, and actually it doesn't say that it's the impact of having the faith in itself. And actually there are non-religious or non-spiritual reasons why being part of a community or having hope, or feeling like there's someone there for you, or feeling loved, feeling wanted, feeling needed, feeling there's a purpose to life Exactly Just those kind of ideas itself could lead to those statistical differences.
Speaker 2:If I may. I think there's two things to say there. So I recently went through a Christian Conservative Fellowship event talking about family hubs.
Speaker 1:Conservative, whether a small C or a big C.
Speaker 2:Big.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:This was the Conservative Christian Fellowship and it was part of the Conservative Party Fringe event and they asked me to come along and share some of our findings.
Speaker 2:And part of the reason the event was being hosted was because it was being hosted by a charity called Spurgeons, and Spurgeons are a Christian-inspired family hubs charity.
Speaker 2:Now they were talking about the impact that family hubs have on young people's lives, impact that family hubs have on young people's lives and when they asked me for my input, I said everything that you've just said is as true, if not more true, of faith communities. Faith communities have spiritual and physical centers. That is a really, really important part here when it comes to mental resilience. So not only is there, like you say, the sense of a purpose, that there is something greater that is there for me regardless, there is also a physical center to that community that I can go to, whether it's a church, mosque, synagogue, gurdwara, whatever it's a place to go, and, as a result, there might be other people there, there might not be, but there is a certain sense of peace that comes with those locations. So, again, this doesn't empirically prove the existence of god or a greater power. It proves the power of that thought, yes, and the power of those places.
Speaker 1:So it's very easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to talking about we can convert that church or we can get rid of that mosque or whatever, but these are quite important places, yes, mentally speaking, for communities yeah, absolutely, and very interestingly, my last episode was about the interrelationship between faith and mental health and it was one person's lived experience of, as a christian, dealing with depression, anxiety, disordered eatings, phobias and things like that, and actually that it's not as clear-cut as to say, you know, either christians won't get mental health or christians will be able to deal with it. It's much more complex and nuanced than that and there were elements that helped I have in a community but there were elements that were difficult in terms of feeling that she'd failed as a christian because she had mental health and that she wasn't trusting God or it was a punishment for sin and the sort of other complex messages she was getting. So really, really fascinating. So let's move on to the role of faith in work. What are the headlines there?
Speaker 2:So, again, when we spoke to some participants and we held a panel talking about this, we had a Christian a and a Muslim talking about how faith plays a role in their workplace.
Speaker 2:The Muslim, who was also a member of the Shia community that I mentioned earlier, the Dawoodi Boreh. He said he is a business owner and, as a result, he himself feels a certain sense of duty in being open and tolerant to his employees. So people who are Christians, Sikhs, jews, they work for him and they feel he says he hopes, and I definitely think it bears out from his experience that they feel a lot more prepared to come to him and say my faith is asking me to do this, or my faith requires me to do this, and he says that's fine, we'll make accommodations for that. So that was one of the first ones that came out of the panel, which I think was really helpful. But in terms of the report itself, we asked about senses of belonging. Now, 57% of the UK in general who are either employed or unemployed, 57% say they have a strong sense of belonging in the sphere of life. This rises quite quickly amongst people who are religious and say that religion is important to their background. It's a 73%, so a 16% rise. Amongst people who are religious and it's important to their identity, feel as though they are safe and accommodated at work. Likewise, a similar number 73% again feel that their employer respects their religious beliefs and accommodates their religious practices. So three quarters of the UK who are religious say that their employer respects their religious beliefs and practices, which is really encouraging.
Speaker 2:Again, I think we need to recognize that this is an achievement. This isn't something that's just happened by accident. This is something to celebrate achievement. This isn't something that's just happened by accident. This is something to celebrate. Likewise, people who are religious and say that their religious background is important to their identity 77% say they are happy and satisfied with work. That's not as high when it comes to people who are not of faith it's only 64%. So massive jump, but it's still a jump. 64%, so massive jump, but it's still a jump. It's 13%. So again, there's this overall trend that people feel respected, feel accommodated for and feel that there's satisfaction.
Speaker 2:Again, it's not necessarily because of the fact that their religion is true or because there's a God, and this was something that we talked about on the panel. It tends to be because people of faith feel that there's a duty but also a pleasure and an enjoyment in work. And I think, again, our Muslim participant said it quite well when he said you don't have to work, you get to work. You know that's the mental frame of mind that the religion, in his experience, encourages. So there's definitely, I think, a positive role that faith plays in shaping your attitude to work. It gives you a certain sense of work ethic, but again gives you a certain sense of purpose when it comes to work in general.
Speaker 1:I would imagine it also gives you opportunities to talk to your employers about your faith. Particularly, I think, for Muslims, there are certain things that would be helpful if their employers granted them, like time off for Jummah prayers or time off during the day to complete Salah. You know a quiet place to pray, things like that, and so actually you're more likely as a religious person to have conversations with your workplace about accommodating that faith, whereas if you're not religious, you maybe don't have those opportunities whereby you need to have those conversations with your employees to make accommodation. So I think it's a really, really fascinating thing to think about. Yeah, really interesting. Let's move on to, then, islam in the UK.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we ended up titling this report the Social Contribution of British Muslims, and the reason for that was because our findings revealed the sense of obligation that Muslims feel. Now, this was obviously significantly influenced by their faith, but many of them made the point of my faith might influence me to think about society a certain way, but I want to be a good neighbor regardless of my faith. That was a very common response. Now I think it would be really interesting to do cross comparisons when it comes to different faiths, and you might be able to say that Islam as a faith encourages that mindset more, but at this stage I wouldn't want to make that conclusion. All I can speak for is Islam in general. So, when it comes to belonging, that was one of the first things we tried to establish was you know, do British Muslims feel that they belong in their community? Now, interestingly, over half of British Muslims report a strong sense of belonging in their local community 51% and this actually drops to 35% for the wider population. So belonging in your local community. So that's really interesting. There's a comparison between the general population 20% and the British Muslim population of 19% in terms of participating in unpaid volunteering work. So even there there's similar levels to the general public, which you know is good, but likewise in terms of charitable activities, it's still very high in terms of charity in general. So, whereas 19% of British Muslims participated in unpaid volunteering work, there is high charitable behavior amongst Muslims. So 75% in the 12 months before the survey, gave a charitable donation. More than half reported giving money to a friend with no expectation of repayment, 51% and 64% reported sharing homemade food with someone who is not a family member. So what?
Speaker 2:We, in the process of putting this report together, we conducted the survey, asked questions around charitable attitudes and found that that was a consistent trend amongst British Muslims that even if they don't personally take part in charitable work, they still participate in charitable behavior. So on that basis, we then undertook case studies into 10 major British Muslim organizations. I won't list all of them, but some of them. The most interesting were Talmama, which was measuring anti-Muslim attacks. Aisha Help, as I mentioned, we had the founder on our panel.
Speaker 2:Al-manar, the Muslim Cultural Heritage Center again, we had the CEO on our panel, project Rise, and Islamic Relief. And Islamic Relief for me was a really interesting one because it began life focusing on Muslim majority nations across the world, but in recent years has focused a lot of its work in the UK. So it's recognizing that there is a lot of work to be done at home. But the consistent trend amongst these case studies and the interviewees that we interviewed for the qualitative section of the report was again this sense that faith is a significant factor in influencing why they do these things. But a wider factor as well is the sense of obligation to both the local community and the wider community in terms of the world. So as much as faith plays a role and I think physiologically speaking there's probably a high correlation between faith as a factor and the perception of yourself as a part of a community Nonetheless we found that there was a consistent pattern there.
Speaker 1:What I'm thinking about is just actually for anyone who's listening, who wants to go and read those reports. I think it's really significant that you chose the name of the report after doing the research and that actually you didn't decide the name and then that influenced the research, that the research influenced the name. I think that's probably a really significant piece of information that people need to know when they read that.
Speaker 2:I think anyone who's done serious academic work will tell you that usually it's the actual research that shapes the research design.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really fascinating.
Speaker 2:When I started my PhD, I remember saying this isn't going to happen to me. Everyone says you know, your research design will change, your research topic will change, and I was there going this isn't going to happen to me.
Speaker 1:And at the end of my PhD it was a different topic.
Speaker 2:So, um, yeah, tell me what your PhD was in. I wrote my PhD in political theory and the political theory of populism in relation to democratic structures. It started off as a study of Brexit and it morphed into a wider, wider thing interesting. Are you able to just summarize what you found, because I think that's really fascinating populism is a particular way of constructing the people, and if populism runs its natural logical course, then it invalidates the conditions for democratic constitutions. So it's a product of democracy but it eats democracy.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, that's really fascinating, really fascinating. Could get completely down a rabbit hole going through that one, but let's just focus back on the last report that has been written, which is about faith versus the environment, and again, this is something that's popped up in a couple of your other answers.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, this was a report which we said to ourselves when we started the institute. Even if something does not align with our hypotheses or our preferred outcomes, we will still publish it, and this was a report where that was the case. Now, what I want to point out is there was still high correlation between people of faith and environmental causes. Tell is, there was still high correlation between people of faith and environmental causes, but it was lower than the overall general population, and the reasons why were really interesting. So, for example, the general population tended to be less determinist. As I say, it tended to believe that environmentalism was something that we could promulgate and climate change was something that we could counter. But younger people who were of faith tended to believe that God was in control and therefore there's no need to worry about climate change. So, for example, we asked that phrase do you think that God is in control and therefore you shouldn't worry about climate change? And 33% of under 25s said yes, whereas only 11% of 65-year-olds and over said yes. Now, what's really interesting is that younger populations are more likely to agree with the statement God is an environmentalist. So 46% of under 25s say that God is an environmentalist, compared to just 17% of over 65s. So there's this really interesting trend where younger religious people are more likely to recognize a relationship between faith and environmental causes, but then that takes on like a subversion of agency, in which God, as the greater power, then plays a greater role than the individual. If that's the teachings that they've received, then who am I to tell them they're wrong? But I do think it's a very interesting pattern.
Speaker 2:Overall, hindus, muslims and Christians generally believe that their faith requires them to care for the world. In a similar way, with the previous reports, we refined our questionings to ask do you consider your faith to be the one true faith? And those that said yes, we turned exclusivists and we found that exclusivist muslims are the most likely to say that their faith requires them to care for the world, at 92 percent, and exclusivist christians 82 percent of them said yes. So both both very, very high higher for muslim, but still very high for Christians and for Hindus it's just under 80. I think it's sort of mid-70s Now.
Speaker 2:Overall, the general public was marginally higher than religious groups when it came to general questions about needing to care for the environment. I think we're talking like. 70% of religious people say that they have a personal obligation to the environment versus 72% of the general population. So it's marginally lower. It's lower, which is not encouraging, but it does at least mean that there is work to do. And again, I'd like to think that that shows people our intellectual honesty, that we're prepared to put something out there that doesn't necessarily put faith in the best light that's really fascinating and I'm trying to.
Speaker 1:I don't know there'd be conjecture, but I wonder if the elder generation have seen that god doesn't tend to fix all the problems, whereas younger people they've had less life experiences there's maybe like a slight optimism, you know, and maybe a more simplistic faith. Do you think, that's true?
Speaker 2:One of the most common examples of this is the Montreal Convention and the ban on hydrofluorochloric carbons and the fact that the ozone layer began repairing itself after 1973. But many young people just don't know that. You know, they don't see the positive impact of human agency on this topic and as a result, they don't think that it's something they can solve. I mean, there's all sorts of environmentalist causes out there. I'm not saying all of them by any means, but there are many who say like it's over, there's no hope, so all we can do is damage control. I don't know, I'm not an environmental scientist, that's not my wheelhouse but there are many of those who instill a certain degree of determinism and defeatism amongst younger people.
Speaker 2:And you know, for better or for worse, that is shaping how people see their faith and that's really interesting. Interesting because if we are led to believe that God plays a determinist role in environmentalism and we play no role, then it almost absolves us of any responsibility and that can cascade down from the major global problems such as the ozone layer, to your local problems, and one of the simplest things you can do is plant a tree, litter, pick, go and clear a river. You know all of these fantastic things that have an impact, but because you believe in a determinist vision of society and global movement of climate change, you don't participate in those things and that's a real shame. You know you should go and litter, pick your local park. You should definitely. You know, try and do all you can, even if just to make it look prettier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a phrase that's used quite a lot is climate anxiety, and I think that it's more likely that the younger generation suffer from climate anxiety because they're the ones that have been bombarded with the messages, and so, therefore, they feel powerless, and so, therefore, putting their trust in an outside agency or in you know, they've lost their faith in governments to do anything. They don't feel empowered, and so actually going to a higher being and going it's okay, there's a God and he's going to sort it out is probably a nice antidote to the anxiety.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a really, really interesting point, especially because it's very difficult to tell people that they have an individual impact on the planet. There are so many things that you can see in the news and around the world that just objectively invalidate that feeling. You know, when it was, was it two years ago, when there was an oil pipe that burst under the I think it was in the pacific ocean, so you literally had images on the news of the ocean on fire.
Speaker 2:No matter how much you litter, pick your local park, you're not going to, you're not going to stop that yeah but like at the same time, I have a few friends who are vegan and many of them say, look, if we just stopped eating meat on a on an industrial scale, that will have an impact on every area of the economy. Now, that's their belief.
Speaker 1:I'm more than happy to respect that, but it's very hard to feel the impact of individual actions when you can see the ocean on fire yeah, gand Gandhi said, because I think they do feel that is that actually there's no point in me giving up meat, because I'm only one person, yes, because they don't really want to either. Those two factors mean that they don't, and I always say to them but actually it says anyone who thinks that small things don't make a difference has never been to bed with a mosquito.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a really nice kind of way of saying that actually, if everybody does a little thing, then this for six months now and we're at a point where we've we've looked at some of our questions and we've decided to ask them on a less regular frequency because they just weren't moving.
Speaker 2:You know, things like I have a diverse friendship group when it comes to faith. If someone has a diverse friendship group in may, they still do in october, so that statistic doesn't change. But things like um, in the last four months my faith has played a role in shaping my life and it can change quite drastically. So if those statistics shift and change and it's worth doing greater research into them. So the reason why we started this research was A to understand the British public's attitudes to faith, but also to kind of guide our future research. So if we're finding that, for example, people become more receptive to someone of any faith, become prime minister, then it would be worth looking at why. Likewise, if they become less receptive, it'd be worth looking at why. So yeah, it's there as kind of an opinion poll, kind of not so hence why we termed it an attitudes tracker.
Speaker 1:And actually for us in the RE world we've got this sort of worldviews approach and part of that is looking at sort of a multidisciplinary way of teaching RE. Ie, we look at RE through a theological lens, through a philosophical lens and through a social sciences lens, and actually that weekly attitudes tracker could be so useful for us in lessons to look at current thoughts within society, which is that kind of social science lens. Let's just talk about that. Then let's talk about the implications of the work that you do for RE teachers. What do you think that is?
Speaker 2:More than anything, I think I would just like people to be more informed when speaking about how people of faith think about life and think about society, because you might be blinded by bias and say, well, of course people of faith don't want X, y and Z. And then you can look at the stats and say, well, of course people of faith don't want X, y and Z. And then you can look at the stats and say, well, actually they do. Or you can say, well, yes, you're right, they don't want that. But it's more complicated than just you know a simple reasons to why, and likewise media one's a really interesting one for me.
Speaker 2:Now, we always ask would you like to see less religion in the media? 54% of the public say yes and 47% of Christians say yes. So the question is asking well, why? Why do you want to see less religion in the media, and what do you mean by that? Do you want to see less in terms of reporting in the news? Do you want to see less in terms of entertainment and so on? So what I'd like or hope for RA teachers and people interested in this in general is to be able to go and look at what British public's attitudes to faith is, and also what people of faith's attitudes are to different aspects of life.
Speaker 1:I mean it's so fascinating and I know that everyone listening is going to want to kind of do their own research, so I'll definitely put a link to the website in the show notes. So IIFL the Institute for Impact of Faith in Life, and that's got the four bits of research that you've done, and then it's got the Attitudes Tracker. It's got a link to all of those things, because I think this is going to really bring our lessons to life and bring subjects to life with really up-to-date lived experiences of faith in the 21st century, rather than a kind of simplistic textbook version. I think that's really great. Is there other ways that people can kind of connect with you, maybe get involved? You know anything like that that would be helpful just to share with people at this point definitely so.
Speaker 2:We're on all the major social networks. You know we're on facebook, instagram, twitter social networks. You know we're on Facebook, instagram, twitter and TikTok. Tiktok's a bit, you know, young for me. No me too, but I have a younger friend who helps me with this sort of thing.
Speaker 2:And, as you very kindly pointed out, you can go on our website, iiflorguk, find everything about us there. You can find about our team. We've got a really fantastic group of researchers of different faiths and none who are very much interested in the role that faith plays in life. And yeah, please, if you have any questions for me directly, my email is jakescott at iiflorguk. Please do get in touch. I'd love to talk to people about the work we do and if anyone wants to get involved, they're more than welcome to do so.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, and do you think there's anything you just want to say that you haven't had the opportunity to, or any sort of final thoughts?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. I think it's been a very in-depth conversation, both about the work that we do and about just faith in general and faith in life, and I would really encourage people I think anyone listening to put theological differences aside and speak to their friends or neighbours who are of a different faith and just try and understand why and what the influences are behind the way they live their lives, because almost certainly it's similar to your own and even those of us who are not of faith.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping that they would approach religion with open mind got a bit of technical issues and I can't actually hear jake at the moment and he can't hear me. The loveliest thing is is we got all the important salient points that we wanted to talk about, so that's fine. So thank you so much for listening. I just I found that really, really fascinating, and I'm sure you did as well, and you know, I'm sure all of you want to go away and look a little bit more into the research that's available and look at how we can enhance our lessons because of it. My name is Louisa Jane Smith and this has been the RE podcast. The podcast for those of you who think RE is boring, but it really isn't really tells us what it means to be human in the 21st century today and respond to all the lovely diversity that's in the world and actually is making a difference and making the world a better place. But thank you so much for listening to us for the life out of you.